


sing to that lonely child

by shadowdance



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Character Study, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Black Eagles Route, Gen, Post-Time Skip, Pre-Time Skip, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2021-01-23 19:30:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21325471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowdance/pseuds/shadowdance
Summary: People keep seeing Felix as someone else. It's not who he thinks it is.
Comments: 14
Kudos: 82





	sing to that lonely child

**Author's Note:**

> saw someone say Felix got what he wanted in crimson flower route (a lone wolf) and he is absolutely miserable. And then I thought about how Jeritza is kind of similar and here we are. Felix is also the only Blue Lion in the Black Eagle house.
> 
> I still haven't done Crimson Flower yet so most of my info came from poking wikis lol. Title is from "my eyes" by the lumineers.

The way Mercedes fusses over him drives Felix nuts—he’s not a _baby, _he’s not even her friend. He doesn’t know her, they don’t have any ties stringing them together, but she stands there acting like she does, acting like she knows his soul inside out.

Felix knows what this is. He has seen it before, how people look at him and see a ghost of someone else. But it’s not—Mercedes doesn’t _know _Glenn. She knows of the Tragedy, but there was nobody she was close to in the Tragedy, nobody she truly lost, nobody who left her feeling hollowed out by grief. Maybe Felix is jealous in that regard. Maybe he doesn’t want her acting like she knows Glenn, like she understands that portion of grief.

But the name that leaps from Mercedes’ lips is unfamiliar—“Emile, you remind me of Emile, he’s my little brother—”

Something splinters in Felix’s heart, the edges sharp with anger. He already has the shadow of a dead boy draped over him, practically _suffocating _him; he does not need another. He doesn’t care to know who this Emil boy is, doesn’t care to be seen as him. He and Mercedes are nothing alike, so why how could he and _Emile _be?

“I am not your brother,” he snaps, and it’s almost satisfying, to watch Mercedes recoil, to see hurt flicker across her face. “So let _go_ of it.”

He has no time to stand in for someone who’s gone, no time to be seen as a weak imitator, a shadow of someone else. So when Mercedes leaves, stricken with embarrassment and sadness and grief, he does not go after her.

He only realizes, later, that he never once asked if Emile was dead. It makes no difference. Besides, it would have been a cruel thing to ask. Felix understands the weight of brothers who leave everything behind, and as badly as he wanted to make Mercedes hurt, he knows that kind of pain has never truly healed.

Emile is dead, he decides. And he is nothing like these dead brothers.

-

Five years later and Edelgard’s gloves are somehow white and stainless, skimming lightly over maps of Fodlan, the war plans she’s created. This is what Felix focuses on, when she fixates her gaze on him.

“You remind me of someone,” she says, and Felix tenses. He has heard this too many times in his life—but Edelgard could not know who he was, does not know about Glenn and the tales of broken knighthood that follow him.

“Who?” Felix asks. Edelgard gives him a rueful smile.

“Oh, you’ve met him before. You know who it is.”

Felix grinds his teeth.

“Don’t you go comparing me to the boar.”

Edelgard blinks. Then she laughs, the sound shockingly light, warm. The walls she has built around herself crumble for a moment, if only for this reprieve of humor.

“No, no,” she assures him, when she catches her breath. “You are nothing like Dimitri.”

A lie. Felix wonders what sort of differences she draws between them. She doesn’t really know him, of course. Nor does she know Dimitri.

“I meant…a general of mine,” Edelgard says. Her gaze shifts towards the door. “He’s quiet, but he’s very trustworthy. Practically breathes in war, depends on it. He’s merciless with his enemies, he won’t let them stand in his way.”

The way she says it—proud, warm, kind—tells Felix that this is supposed to be a compliment. Instead, all he feels is a dull ache to his chest, his lungs. He knows who she’s referring to. He’s not stupid. He doesn’t know how to feel, to be compared to such a heartless monster. Had it been the man underneath the mask, he would’ve felt proud, once upon a time. Now he just feels empty.

“I don’t know him,” he announces, a little sharply. Edelgard gazes up at him.

“Well, yes. Nobody really knows him.”

_Just like how you don’t know me, _Felix thinks.

“You two could be friends, though,” Edelgard muses, thoughtfully. “If I combine your strengths together…perhaps—”

Felix’s stomach churns, and he scrapes his chair back, standing up abruptly. “No,” he snaps. “I work alone.”

Edelgard blinks, soft, slow. For a moment, Felix wonders if he’s gone too far—but then she smiles again, something humorless.

“You sound just like him.”

It is a compliment, perhaps. But Felix’s heart contracts, and an ache settles in his lungs, impossible to breathe around. Merciless, heartless, restless—is that all he is now? Another empty killer? What happened to the boy he once was, the boy who never dragged shadows behind him that weren’t his? What happened to _Felix?_

He’s not going to find answers in this cramped war room, papers scribbled with ways to destroy his homeland. There are no answers in war.

Felix leaves without a word.

-

The Death Knight corners Felix in the training grounds. There’s no way Felix is going to turn down a spar with the _Death Knight_—but it seems as though he doesn’t care to fight.

“You are more like me than you care to admit,” Death Knight tells him. Felix tightens his hand on his sword, pretends that the ache in his lungs is from the cold air, nothing more.

“No, I’m not.” Then, “Shut up.”

Death Knight stares at him. His eyes are red, menacing, unblinking; Felix cannot discern what is behind the mask. Yet he still feels this sense of—pity, almost echoing off the Death Knight’s shoulders, driving straight into his heart. He doesn’t like it.

“You are alone now,” Death Knight muses. “A lone wolf, thirsting only for blood, a good fight, and nothing else. Is that true?”

Felix’s knuckles turn white from gripping his sword.  
  
“Shut up.”

“So I have hit a nerve.” Death Knight studies him. His mask is split into that eery smile, hollow and mirthless, but Felix feels that the man underneath the mask is not smiling. His tone is almost sad, if Felix could read between the tones. “Does that mean it is true?”

Felix wipes the sweat off his forehead. His eyes are stinging with salt now.

“It isn’t true. So just—shut up. Can’t we spar?”

“No.”

Felix frowns.

“Spar with me.”

Death Knight gazes at him. His tone is heavy when he says, “No.”

“Spar with me!” Felix’s voice raises to a shout, and he knows he sounds ridiculous, like a bratty child, but he can’t help it. “Just shut up and raise your sword! Or are you too afraid? Are you scared? Is that what you truly are—a coward?”

Death Knight merely appraises him, as though he’s unworthy. Felix drags in a ragged breath.

“Is the man beneath the mask nothing but a scared little boy?” he sneers. “Is that why you wear your armor? Because the boy underneath all that is _weak_?”

He’s hurling insults, hoping to land a hit somewhere. He wants Death Knight to raise his scythe, to lift his sword, to slam the blade against his own. He wants a challenge. He wants to hurt.

He wants to replace the guilt in his chest with pain.

“You remind me of myself,” Death Knight says, and the way he says it—wistful, regretful—almost makes Felix’s heart break.

“We are not the same. I am not—I am _me. _I am nobody else.”

“That is true,” Death Knight agrees. “And you are _with_ nobody else, are you?”

Felix is suddenly aware of how quiet the training grounds are, how the only voices are his and Death Knight’s. If he closes his eyes, though, he can hear Ingrid shout at Sylvain for being late, hear Sylvain’s laugh ring between the pillars, hear _Dimitri_—

“I’m here,” Felix says. He opens his eyes, and Death Knight gazes back. “I’m here and—and that is what matters.”

Death Knight shakes his head. “You’re here,” he says, and his voice is sad. “And full of regrets. Is that how you want to live your life?”

Something snaps in his chest, worn and thin. Felix scowls, and the anger washes over his senses, crawls up his throat and snatches his voice.

“I am _not you!” _he screams, and it sounds raw to him—primal and loud and animalistic. He hasn’t screamed this loud since Glenn died, since grief took hold of him and rattled his voice until he could only make guttural noises of pain.

He doesn’t recognize his own voice. He doesn’t recognize himself. Felix’s head drops to his hands, and his breathing comes out unsteady, shaky and hollow.

In the silence that follows, Death Knight’s whisper is loud enough to shatter the sky.

“Hold onto that pain. It will make you feel human.”

When Felix lifts his head, Death Knight is gone.

**Author's Note:**

> Felix is self-destructive and personally I find that really sexy


End file.
